EDITOR’S TABLE.

The New Year.—We are standing once more together, reader, at that fairy vestibule which opens rich with hope and bright to expectation upon another twelve-month; a coming lapse of time that like a swell of the ocean tossing with its fellows, heaves onward to the land of Death and Silence. At such a time, although it seem not meet, it may be, to indulge in sad thoughts and pensive recollections, who can refrain from giving a backward glance to years that have passed like a weaver’s shuttle, and woven our ‘checkered web of life?’ Shall we not for one moment remember too, even at this joyous season, the loved and lost who have gone before us, to solve the great mystery of life, and the momentous secrets of death and the grave? Shall we not remember that we too are passing away; and in thoughtful mood, pause to ask with the poet:

While however we give to emotions like these their appropriate vent, we are not called upon to forget that there is much that is inspiring and delightful in the commencement of the year. The time-honored custom of our metropolis has made it a point of peculiar radiance; a halcyon period, when heart’s-ease would seem to be the general feeling, and smiles the social insignia. Then the visit is exchanged between friends whom perhaps the departed year had somewhat alienated; old associations are revived, and cordialities that had well nigh been forgotten are strengthened and renewed. As the lip is wetted with friendly wine, the bosom expands in the generous warmth of honest enjoyment; the cold formalities of factitious station give place to undisguised welcome and open-handed cheer. The rich and the poor meet together, and the spirit of pleasure is with all. As the parties go their rounds, and familiar forms and faces appear to greeting eyes, the necessity of friendship and the desolation of its absence come home to the mind. It is felt that comfort is lost when allied to selfishness, and that it is good to be respected or beloved. And as those meet between whom the year has passed in sullen estrangement; upon whose anger many an evening sun has descended; a relenting spirit obeys the mingled voices of Memory and Friendship: the kind resolve is made and followed; so that instead of the thorn to goad and wound, there springs up in the pathway of the Reconciled the olive or the myrtle. How sweet is the sight of human goodness, struggling to surmount the petty passions which discolor its beauty, and bending to the benign suggestions of that pure and gentle principle, peace with man! Doubtless there are many severe strivings with natural pride, before these ends can be reached; but the new year awakens such throngs of conciliatory sentiments, that it is impossible to resist them. The call is made; the oversight or neglect explained; the breach is closed; and friendship is paramount! Months of reverses and cares and disappointments are lost in that initial day, whose span is golden from sun to sun; a lapse to be remembered with quiet satisfaction in trials to come. Indeed, a moment’s reflection will assure any contemplative mind that resentment is the most pitiful passion that can agitate the human breast. True, there is such a thing as ‘spirit,’ but how often is it ill-directed! How often magnified by little causes into an importance wholly incommensurate with the object desired! It is the province of new-year visits to crush these poisonous weeds of our path, to quench their noxious tendrils, and to substitute in their stead the balm of friendship and good-will. For such an object the morning of the year is most auspicious. The grand festival of our Saviour’s nativity has but lately ended, and a preservation of the era of good feeling is enjoined both by Precept and Hope. Who can resist such appeals to that kindness which increases the happiness of its possessor? With these reiterated words of counsel and of affection, let us take present leave of our readers, by wishing them in hackneyed phrase, but with unhackneyed spirit, a Happy New-Year!

The Rights of Women.—We wish it were possible to transfer to this printed page the beautiful chirography of the annexed communication, which proceeds from the pen of a lady who, with a few others of her gentle sex, sat out the reading of the lecture upon the ‘Rights of Women,’ by Mr. John Neal, at the Broadway Tabernacle last winter, and which was so heartily laughed at by the press and the town for a day or two after. It is gratifying to remark that women themselves have been the prominent satirists of the characteristic absurdities put forth on the occasion alluded to. But to our fair correspondent: ‘Appear, bright Spirits of the ancient Nine! (for you were women, and can well appreciate my appeal) arrayed in all the panoply of your charms! Thou, Minerva! aid me with thy wisdom! Ye, most lovely Graces! attend me with the power of honey-like persuasiveness! And thou, John Neal! arrayed in the drapery of the softer sex, gracefully to maintain the lofty eminence whereon thou standest, assist me with the glorious power of thy overwhelming eloquence, while I assert the high prerogative of Woman! Yet when I dwell on the brilliant efforts accomplished by thy mighty genius in our behalf, the pen falls powerless from my despairing hand, and I can merely point to thee as the potent champion of our down-trodden rights! Instead of dwelling in dull obscurity, victims to the caprice of men; mending their thread-bare clothing and scolding servants—base, unwomanly pursuits!—instead of listening in silence to the storms of political debate; instead of remaining within the shadow of our own roofs, and gathering around the domestic hearth the thornless roses of existence; rendering home a haven of rest to the weary and care-worn; instead of slumbering idly, in the security of our mansions, when the torrent of war rolls over the land; instead of girding then our brothers for the stormy fight, bidding them God-speed; instead of ignobly bending before the tyrannical power of Man, thou, O! astute Neal! wouldst have us pluck the laurel-wreath from our kinsman’s brow, and bind it on our own. Thou wouldst have us rise in all the dignity of offended ‘equality,’ and boldly assert the holy right of ‘free suffrage to all!’ Why, forsooth, should we rather be confined to the narrow circle of home than our friends of the other sex? Are we not as capable of sounding the loud alarm of war, of mingling in the strife and tumult of the battle-hour, as the ladies of antique Amazonia, or the warrior-men of our own day? Have we not intellect enough to cope with the Websters, the Clays, and the Wrights, in the halls of Congress? Is not our dignity sufficient to maintain, with honor to our country and ourselves, the various offices of the government? Why may not our superior talents elevate us to the lofty station of the presidential chair?—to become Ambassadresses, Generalesses, Stateswomen? Surely our intellect is as lofty, as noble, and as clear as that in which proud man exults. Arise then, Women of America! Study immediately the tactics of military discipline; proceed to the green savannahs of Florida; wrest their authority from those who now possess it, and deck your own brows of loveliness with the wreaths of conquest and of glory. March to the halls of legislation; demand from statesmen there assembled the concession of ‘woman’s rights,’ and desert them not till that ‘vantage ground’ is well secured. Then, ladies, will you be enabled to cast aside with disdain the bonds of domestic confinement, which insure merely your peace and happiness; to mingle your shrill cries with the tumult of contending armies, confounding confusion itself with your loud clamors! You may then unite your voices with the shouts of opposing factions at the momentous periods of election, huzzaing for your candidates, and gathering all your influence to win success for them. So shall you nobly fulfil the high destiny allotted you, instead of longer enduring the degrading cares attendant on the happiness of your fathers’ and your husbands’ homes. So shall you take by storm the hearts of men as well as the citadels of your enemies; forcing them to admire those female ‘braves’ who so kindly relieve them of the weighty burden of their cares.’ Capital! This mock-heroic is just the vein for a theme so ridiculous as the insane crudities here touched upon. By the by; a private note advises us that ‘there have been recent symptoms of chuckling exhibited by the ‘champion of women,’ on the supposition, real or assumed, that the attention of the legislatures of several States had been diverted toward ‘woman’s rights’ in the matter of personal property between man and wife, by reason of the lecture aforesaid!’ It is unnecessary perhaps to add, in justice to the public sense, that the action of three or four States upon this subject had a far different origin, as their legislative records will abundantly show.

Ole Bull.—We confess ourselves among the uninitiated in the mysteries of music. We are quite aware that it is not a little dangerous for one who would not lose caste in society to assert that he does not greatly admire that ill-assorted compound of ‘strains’ which is usually designated by the hackneyed phrases of ‘brilliant execution’ and ‘difficult passages;’ passages which Dr. Johnson wished were ‘not only difficult but impossible:’ we cannot force an admiration nor affect an enthusiasm which we do not feel. Indeed, we have always had great sympathy for the amateur of fashion who aspired to great refinement of taste, to exhibit which, in one branch of art, he gave on one occasion an entertainment of instrumental music. While the musicians were all at work, he seemed delighted with the performance; but when one instrument chanced to be engaged upon a solo, he inquired, in a towering passion, why the others were remaining idle? ‘It is a pizzicato for one instrument,’ replied the operator. ‘I can’t help that,’ replied the virtuoso; ‘let the trumpets pizzicato along with you; they’re paid to do it!’ Now in regard to musical knowledge and taste, this hopeful amateur has many a counterpart in this day and generation, and in this same city of Gotham. In the case of Ole Bull, however, there has been no call for affected admiration. He has compelled not only admiration but enthusiasm; not indeed by mere artistical ‘execution,’ although in this he is acknowledged to be preëminent, but by the creations of genius, which ‘take the full heart captive.’ Let the distant reader imagine an audience of three thousand persons awaiting in breathless expectance the entrance upon the Park-stage of this great Master. The curtain rises, and after the lapse of a moment, a tall manly person, with a frank, ingenuous expression of countenance, emerges with an embarrassed salutation from the wing, and with another somewhat less constrained, stands in front of the orchestra, the focus of every eye and glass in that brilliant assemblage. Pausing for a brief space, as if to collect himself, he raises his bow, and with a slight motion, beckons to each member of the orchestra in turn, who ‘start into sound’ at his bidding as if touched by the wand of Ithuriel. When the tide of harmony has reached its flood, and is gradually ebbing back to fainter sounds, the Master raises his instrument to his shoulder and lays his ear upon it, as if listening for his key-note amidst the tones that are serpentining through his brain. When to the audience ‘nothing lives ’twixt these and silence,’ a strain which has at first a dying fall imperceptibly swells on the ear. It is the instrument, beyond all peradventure; and from that moment you are ‘all ear.’ While you are wondering why you never knew before that there was such a volume of sound in a violin, a passage of infinite pathos arrests your heart, and you find your eyes moistening under its influence. It subsides into tremulous tones that retreat farther and farther from the ear, until they seem to come from a mile’s distance; anon, they begin to approach again, and swelling gradually upon the ‘aching sense,’ almost overpower you with their fulness of melody. This transcendent effort of genius reminded us of the phantasmagora, or ‘magic lantern;’ for what the lessening and enlarging figures of that instrument are to the eye, Ole Bull’s magic sounds are to the ear. We had intended to allude in detail to several of the performances of this great Master; but we lack the requisite space. We can only instance the ‘Norwegian Rondo,’ the ‘Themes from Bellini,’ and the ‘Carnival at Venice,’ as eminently justifying the fervent enthusiasm which they excited. It was no unnatural combination of splendid sinuosities, of small notes split into hexagonals, and attenuated into tremors that were ‘no great shakes’ after all, which entranced the audience; it was full, rich tones; it was melody, harmony, that won their loud and almost irrepressible applause. We have not yet had the pleasure to hear Vieux-Temps, the distinguished violinist recently arrived among us. His numerous friends and countrymen in the metropolis rank him even above Ole Bull. We are inclined, however, to trust the comparison made by an eminent brother-artist, who assisted at his first concert: ‘Vieux-Temps,’ said he, ‘is a very accomplished artist; but Ole Bull is a magnificent genius.’ We shall have something to say of Vieux-Temps, Artot, and Sig. Cassela, in a subsequent number of the Knickerbocker, should time and occasion serve.

A Second ‘Ralph Ringwood.’—We have a western correspondent, a ‘man of mark’ in his region, and far from unknown elsewhere, who has seen a good deal of the world, and whose entertaining epistles always remind us of the graphic ‘Experiences of Ralph Ringwood,’ as recorded in these pages by Washington Irving. Here is a fragment of youthful reminiscence, fresh from his mint, ‘which it is hoped may please;’ and if it does, we will use our ‘selectest influence’ to induce him to write out for us a series of papers containing his complete autobiography, which we have good reason to believe would overflow with romance and strange vicissitude: ‘I was raised,’ he writes, ‘as we western folks term it, in a small village some fifteen miles from Boston, and when about sixteen years of age I paid a visit to the metropolis for the first time in my life. When I first arrived there I spent some hours in trying to hunt up an old play-mate who had been bound apprentice to a Boston mechanic some two years previous. I could hear nothing of him, however, and so gave up the search. But one day, while sauntering down the main-street, and wondering at all I saw, I suddenly encountered a strange sight. It was a sheep, dead and dressed, but moving along the side-walk in an upright position, and apparently without help! Puzzled at this phenomenon, I turned round as it passed me, in order to observe it more closely; when to my astonishment I discovered a boy behind it, who with the sheep on his back was shuffling along the walk, stern-foremost. I was still more astonished when I recognized in this lad my old and long-sought playmate. ‘Dick, my boy!’ said I, grasping his hand warmly. Dick seemed a little embarrassed at first; but after a moment’s hesitation, he threw down his load spitefully, and seizing my hand returned my grasp as cordially as it had been given. ‘For God’s sake, Dick,’ inquired I, ‘how long is it since you commenced walking backward?’ ‘Not a great while,’ replied he, with a grin. ‘To tell you the truth, Frank, I saw you looking in the jeweller’s window there, and knew you at once; and as I didn’t care to be seen by an old comrade with a sheep on my back, I was in hopes to escape your observation by walking in the manner in which you saw me.’ ‘And that was the very thing which led me to discover you,’ I replied; ‘you might have passed me in the ordinary way, nineteen times in every twenty, without being recognized.’ ‘Well, it’s all one now, since you have found me out,’ said Dick. ‘But what, after all, are you going to do with that measly-looking animal?’ I inquired. ‘Eat it,’ replied he, with a comical twist of the nose; ‘I have to lug one home every day; we apprentices live on them altogether. I’m a sheep myself, almost; b-a-a-h!’ and here he imitated the cry of that animal so naturally, that I had no doubt of the truth of his statement. After a few moments’ conversation, chiefly about home, the clock struck ten, when Dick suddenly resumed his load, and after giving me the directions to the ‘old man’s’ house, and exacting a promise to call and see him in the evening, he started for home. At the appointed hour in the evening, I called to see him, as agreed upon, and found him waiting for me. But what a different-looking personage from the one I met in the morning! He was now very smartly dressed in a small black frock-coat, and drab gaiter-trowsers strapped tightly over a pair of nicely-polished boots. On his head a black velvet cap, from which two enormous tassels were swinging, was setting jauntily on one side, while in his hand he carried a little silver-headed cane, with which he occasionally rapped his legs. In my unsophisticated eyes he was a very paragon of gentility, and I couldn’t help contrasting him with my own countrified appearance. However, I had but a moment for reflection; for sallying into the street, with me at his heels, Dick at once proposed going to the theatre. I agreed without hesitation, for the big play-bills had been staring me in the face all day, and on them were emblazoned in large capitals the names of Cooper and Finn, who were to play together that evening in one of Shakspeare’s comedies. When we arrived at the play-house, Dick took me aside, and pointing to the little window in the office, proposed that I should go and purchase the tickets; ‘because,’ said he, ‘the box-keeper knows me.’ I couldn’t exactly comprehend why the fact of his being known to the box-keeper should prevent his purchasing the tickets himself. However, I supposed it was all right, and so I crowded up to the little window, and after awaiting my turn, obtained two pit-tickets, for which I had to pay out of my own pocket, of course. Dick took them from me when I returned, and then again resuming the lead, he conducted me into the lobby of the play-house. Here he handed the tickets to the door-keeper, at the same time nodding his head toward me, in order to intimate to that gentleman that I was under his special patronage, and that the other admission was intended for me. Once seated in the centre of the pit, Dick seemed to be in his glory. He ogled the ladies in the boxes, and whistled and shouted and stamped, and cried ‘Physic!’ until I thought he would split his throat. But when at last the gloomy curtain rose and the stars of the evening stood glittering before us, he clapped and shouted so much louder and longer than all the rest, that the whole audience gazed at him with admiration. He would have gone on applauding, I verily believe, until the end of the play, had not a tall gentleman, with a red handkerchief round his throat, and carrying a long pole, rapped him over the head, and peremptorily shouted ‘Silence!’ From that moment Dick was as mute as a Quaker, until the end of the play; when rushing out and dragging me after him, he proposed that we should go and finish the evening at a celebrated coffee-house, kept by ‘a particular friend of his,’ and where he had agreed to meet some half-dozen fellow-apprentices. Here we stayed until a very late hour, drinking and smoking, telling stories and singing songs. As it grew later, our companions one by one walked or reeled out of the bar-room, until we two were left the only tenants, save the landlord. The latter then commenced closing the house, and hinted pretty strongly that it was high time we were going. I turned to Dick, who had been remarkably silent for some time, when to my utter dismay I discovered that he was perfectly insensible from drink. I looked up to the landlord for counsel. He was a short, squab man, with a bulbous excresence growing out from between his shoulders, that I suppose passed for a head, though it looked like a wen; a kind of expletive, to wear a hat on, or to fill up the hollow of a shabby wig. ‘What shall we do with him?’ said I. ‘Hustle him out!’ cried he; ‘hustle him out! he didn’t get his liquor here: I’ve no room for such company!’ I then endeavored to put my companion upon his feet, but his legs bent under him, and his whole body seemed as limber and lifeless as a wet rag. ‘You can’t do any thing with him in that way,’ continued the landlord; ‘if you want to get him home to-night, you must take him on your back and carry him there yourself. He’ll be bright enough in the morning.’ I saw no other way of proceeding; and so, being strong and athletic myself, while Dick was of slight proportions, I managed, with the assistance of the landlord, to get him upon my back, and then started for his master’s house. As my burthen was perfectly speechless, I had plenty of time for uninterrupted thought as I trudged along; and I couldn’t help contrasting the apprentice of the morning with the apprentice of the present moment. Then, though rather coarsely dressed, and smooched with the marks of labor, he blushed at being caught with a sheep on his back, though he had come honestly by it; but now, though bedecked in the habiliments of a gentleman, he was being carried home himself like a beast on the back of a companion. On reaching his master’s house I laid him down upon the door-sill, where he commenced breathing intensely through his nose, while I fumbled round for the handle of the bell, which I rang. The ‘old man’ himself came to the door, and looking down at his apprentice, shook his head sorrowfully. Then turning to a black domestic, who with a candle in her hand stood grinning behind him, he said, ‘Here’s Dick come home drunk again, Dinah; you must take him up stairs and get him to bed in the best way you can.’ The old gentleman turned away with a tear in his eye, and I also departed, leaving Dick, who had come to his senses a little, struggling in the arms of the brawny black, and vainly trying to kiss her polished cheek. Thus ended my first youthful adventure in a city.’

Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—We encounter in our personal correspondence not a few comments, pro and con, upon the papers on ‘Mind and Instinct,’ which appeared in the last two numbers of the Knickerbocker. Our friend and correspondent, ‘Harry Franco,’ among others, in a gossiping epistle to the Editor, writes as follows:

‘I have been considerably interested in your correspondent’s paper on mind and instinct; only I rather wonder at his laboring to prove a theory which few are inclined to question. But he does not after all, it appears to me, draw the right conclusions from his argument. All living beings have a mind, or reason, or what you will, which prompts them to do all that their animal functions are capable of performing. In this respect man is as much governed by instinct as a brute. My neighbor’s dog every night when I come home walks up to me, wags his tail, and looks in my face, and says in his way, ‘How are you?’ His master gives me a nod, takes his pipe from his mouth, and says the same. But when a stranger comes to my door, neither the dog nor his master salutes him; but were he to fall into the brook, they would both run to pull him out. Are they not both influenced by exactly the same feelings? If I should ask my neighbor to endorse my note, he would look sulky, hem! and haw! and refuse; if I should attempt to take a bone from his dog, the brute would snarl and growl, and perhaps bite me. Do you see any marvellous difference between the two animals? A near neighbor of mine, about six months since, had a little boy of four years old, who had a spaniel of which he was very fond. One day during the absence of the father, the child was taken ill with the croup; the mother was alarmed, and it so happened that her servants were away, and she had no one to send for a physician. The poor woman was in great tribulation, for in spite of all her efforts the child grew worse. In about an hour after the child was taken ill, her father’s carriage stopped at the door, and her mother made her appearance. Her father’s house was about two miles distant. The grandmother said that Carlo, the sick child’s dog, ‘came running into the house, all bespattered with mud, and flew about and acted so strangely that she knew something must be the matter with little Billy, her grandson, and she came to see what it was.’ Until then, the mother of the child had not noticed the absence of the dog from the room, for the boy was playing with him when he was taken sick. The child remained ill three or four days, and then died; and during the whole time the dog never left his bed-side; he watched by the corpse until it was buried, and then took possession of the little boy’s chair, which he would allow no one to touch, not even the child’s mother. Every day he absented himself for three or four hours; and the father one day going to look at his child’s grave, found that the dog had almost scratched his way down to the coffin. He was after this kept within doors; but he refused to eat, and in a short time died in the chair of his little master. If I had time, I could tell you a story almost as touching, in relation to a pig, an animal that phrenologically speaking has generally been looked upon as somewhat deficient in the region of the sentiments.’

Now that our attention has been awakened to the subject, we find in our casual reading the testimony in favor of ‘mind in animals’ greatly to increase and multiply. Oleus Magnus, Bishop of Norway, in a work written in Latin some two centuries ago, tells us of a fox that, in order to get rid of the fleas which infested his skin, was accustomed to swim out into a lake with a straw band held high and dry in his mouth. When the water-hating vermin had all escaped from his submerged body to the dry straw, down dived Reynard, leaving his tormentors ‘at sea,’ and rising again beyond the scope of safe jumping. ‘Curious, isn’t it?’ A correspondent at Rochester, ‘who experienced much satisfaction in the perusal of the article’ above alluded to, was yet ‘a little dissatisfied with the closing portion of it.’ The proposition of the writer to ‘abstain entirely from animal food,’ on the score of humanity, he considers ‘especially ridiculous.’ He has ‘the gravest authority for stating, that every drop of water that quenches our thirst or laves our bodies, contains innumerable insects, which are sacrificed to our necessities or comforts; each ingredient in the simplest vegetable fare conveys to inevitable destruction thousands of the most beautiful and harmless of created beings. From the first to the last gasp of our lives, we never inhale the air of heaven without butchering myriads of sentient and innocent creatures. Can we upbraid ourselves then for supporting our lives by the death of a few animals, many of whom are themselves carnivorous, when the infant who has lived for a single day has killed an infinitely greater number of human beings than the longest life would suffice to murder by design? Or, if we sacrifice either our lives or our comforts by scrupulously denying ourselves the use of animal food, can we derive much consolation from considering that we spare a few scores of beings, when we involuntarily, but knowingly, are every moment massacreing more than the longest life-time would suffice to enumerate?’ ••• A reference to the case of ‘Rachael Baker, the American Somnambulist,’ in a late London Magazine, has recalled that remarkable phenomenon very forcibly to our mind. Rachael Baker resided within four miles of ‘the house where we were born;’ and the first exhibitions of her religious exercises during sleep took place alternately at the homestead and the residence of a relation in its near vicinity. We remember as it were but yesterday the solemnity which sat upon the faces of the assembled neighbors, as they awaited the signal-groan from an adjoining apartment, to which, at about seven P. M., the Somnambulist usually retired for the night. When the door was opened the crowd pressed in. The sleeper, dressed in white muslin, lay straight and motionless in bed; her eyes closed, her face white and inflexible as marble; and her fingers with livid marks beneath the nails, clasped meekly upon her bosom. Flecks of foam were visible at the corners of her mouth, and her lips moved ‘as if they would address themselves to speech,’ for some seconds before any audible sound came from them. At length, however, in a clear silvery voice she opened with prayer; a prayer fervent, devotional, and evidently direct from the heart. When this was concluded, and after the lapse of a brief space, she began an exhortation, in language pure, beautiful, often eloquent, and occasionally rising to a noble sublimity; and then closed with prayer. If interrupted with a question, as she frequently was, by clergymen, medical gentlemen, and others, she answered it with readiness, and with a felicity of language surpassing belief. ‘Rachael,’ said a clergyman to her in our hearing one evening, while in the midst of her discourse, ‘why do you engage in these exercises? and why——’ She interrupted the speaker with words to this effect: ‘I, even I, a worm of the dust, am but a feeble instrument in the hands of Him who hath declared, ‘I will pour out of my spirit upon you; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy.’ Even so Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight!’ The girl was of bashful demeanor; altogether uneducated; could scarcely read; knew little of the Bible; and indeed in her waking hours conversed in a language that was far from being respectable English; but neither in her prayers nor in her exhortations was she ever at fault; nor did she at any time exhibit the slightest hesitation or confusion. Her answers to questions were brief, pointed, and invariably correct. Crowds flocked to see her, until the public curiosity overran all bounds. She was visited by many persons from New-York; and finally, under the direction of a committee of medical gentlemen from the city, was brought to the metropolis, where she created a great sensation. A pamphlet was written upon her case by Dr. Mitchell; and we should feel greatly obliged to any reader who would place it for a short time in our hands. ••• A valued friend and correspondent, to whose kindness we have frequently been indebted, has sent us a ‘Massachusetts Centinel,’ printed in Boston sixty years ago; in which, among many other curious and amusing matters, there is a copy of an original letter written by the celebrated George Alexander Stevens, author of ‘Lecture on Heads,’ etc., dated at ‘Yarmouth Jail, County of Norfolk,’ which runs thus:

‘Sir: When I parted from you at Doncaster, I imagined, long before this, to have met with some oddities worth acquainting you with. It is grown a fashion of late to write lives; I have now, and for a long time have had, leisure enough to undertake mine, but want materials for the latter part of it; for my existence now cannot properly be called living, but what the painters term still life; having ever since February 13, been confined in this town-goal for a London debt.

‘As a hunted deer is always shunned by the happier herd, so am I deserted by the company,7 my share taken off, and no support left me, save what my wife can spare me out of hers:

‘With an economy, which until now I was a stranger to, I have made shift to victual hitherto my little garrison, but then it has been with the aid of my good friends and allies—my clothes. This week’s eating finishes my last waistcoat; and next, I must atone for my errors upon bread and water.

‘Themistocles had so many towns to furnish his table, and a whole city bore the charge of his meals. In some respects I am like him, for I am furnished by the labors of a multitude. A wig has fed me two days; the trimming of a waistcoat as long; a pair of velvet breeches paid my washerwoman, and a ruffled shirt has found me in shaving. My coats I swallowed by degrees. The sleeves I breakfasted upon for weeks; the body, skirts, etc., served me for dinner two months. My silk stocking have paid my lodgings, and two pair of new pumps enabled me to smoke several pipes. It is incredible how my appetite, (barometer like) rises in proportion as my necessities make their terrible advances. I here could say something droll about a good stomach, but it is ill jesting with edge tools, and I am sure that is the sharpest thing about me. You may think I can have no sense of my condition, that while I am thus wretched, I should offer at ridicule: but, Sir, people constituted like me, with a disproportioned levity of spirits, are always most merry when they are most miserable; and quicken like the eyes of the consumptive, which are always brightest the nearer the patient approaches his dissolution. However, Sir, to show you I am not lost to all reflection, I think myself poor enough to want a favor, and humble enough to ask it here. Sir, I might make an encomium on your good nature, humanity, etc.; but I shall not pay so bad a compliment to your understanding, as to endeavor, by a parade of phrases, to win it over to my interest. If you could, any night at a concert, make a small collection for me, it might be a means of my obtaining my liberty; and you well know, Sir, the first people of rank abroad will perform the most friendly offices for the sick; be not, therefore, offended at the request of a poor (though a deservedly punished) debtor.

‘Geo. A. Stevens.’

Among the facetiæ of the ‘Centinel’ we find a clever hit at two prominent official characters of the name of Day: ‘Titus, a Roman emperor, we are told, once lamented that ‘he had lost a Day.’ If the commonwealth of Massachusetts were to lose two Days, it would not be the cause of much lamentation!’ A correspondent elsewhere observes, that in a procession on a certain solemn occasion in this city, the place of the physician was immediately before the corpse; which, he adds, was ‘exactly consonant with the etiquette observed at capital executions in ancient times; the executioner always going before!’ By the way, ‘speaking of Stevens;’ perhaps the reader of good things at second-hand may not be aware how much he is indebted to this author’s ‘Lectures on Heads’ for amusement and instruction. They were very popular throughout Great Britain; and as illustrated by the author, after the manner of ‘Old Matthews,’ they are said to have been irresistible. It was in this collection that the law-cases of ‘Bullum vs. Boatum’ and ‘Daniel vs. Dishclout’ had their origin. They are familiar to every school-boy, not less for their wit than the canine Latinity in which they abound; ‘Primus strokus est provokus; now who gave the primus strokus? Who gave the first offence?’ Or, ‘a drunken man is ‘homo duplicans,’ or a double man, seeing things double,’ etc., etc. We annex an example or two of the writer’s individuality. The first is a sketch of a nil admirari critic and amateur, who has travelled long enough abroad to fall in love with every thing foreign, and despise every thing belonging to his own country except himself: ‘He pretended to be a great judge of paintings, but only admired those done a great way off, and a great while ago; he could not bear any thing painted by any of his own countrymen. One day being in an auction-room where there was a number of capital pictures, and among the rest an inimitable painting of fruits and flowers, the connoisseur would not give his opinion of the picture until he had examined his catalogue; when, finding it was done by one of his own countrymen, he pulled out his eye-glass, exclaiming: ‘This fellow has spoiled a fine piece of canvass; he’s worse than a sign-post dauber; there’s no keeping, no perspective, no fore-ground, no chiar’oscuro. Look you, he has attempted to paint a fly upon that rose-bud! Why, it is no more like a fly than I am like an ——’ But as the connoisseur approached his finger to the picture, the fly flew away. It happened to be the real insect!’ Is not the following a forcible picture of a mercurial, hero-loving Frenchman? ‘Has he property? An edict from the Grand Monarque can take it, and he is satisfied. Pursue him to the Bastile, or the dismal dungeon in the country to which a lettre-de-cachet conveys him, and buries him for life: there see him in all his misery; ask him ‘What is the cause?’ ‘Je ne sai pas; it is the will of the Grand Monarque.’ Give him a soup-maigre, a little sallad, and a hind-quarter of a frog, and he’s in spirits. ‘Fal, lal, lal! Vive le Roi? Vive la bagatelle!’’ Here we have a Materialist proving the affinity of matter: ‘All round things are globular, all square things flat-sided. Now, if the bottom is equal to the top, and the top equal to the bottom, and the bottom and top are equal to the four sides, then all matter is as broad as it is long.’ But the materialist ‘had not in his head matter sufficient to prove matter efficient; and being thus deficient, he knew nothing of the matter.’ One of Stevens’s ‘heads’ was that of a heartless, devil-may-care sort of person, in some respects like the hero of ‘A Capital Joke’ in preceding pages, who is always ‘keeping it up.’ He illustrates his own character very forcibly: ‘I’ll tell you how it was; you see, I was in high spirits, so I stole a dog from a blind man, for I do so love fun! So then the blind man cried for his dog, and that made me laugh; so says I to the blind man. ‘Halloo, master! do you want your dog?’ ‘Yes, Sir, indeed, indeed I do,’ says he. Then says I to the blind man, says I, ‘Go look for him! Keep it up!’ I always turn sick when I think of a parson; and my brother, he’s a parson too, and he hates to hear any body swear; so I always swear when I am along with him, just to roast him. I went to dine with him one day last week; and as soon as I arrived, I began to swear. I never swore so well in all my life; I swore all my new oaths. At last my brother laid down his knife and fork, and lifting up his hands and eyes, he calls out: ‘O Tempora! O Mores.’ ‘Oh, ho! brother,’ says I, ‘don’t think to frighten me by calling all your family about you. I don’t mind you nor your family neither. Only bring Tempora and Moses here—that’s all! I’ll box ’em for five pounds. Keep it up!’ ••• There is many a bereaved heart that will be touched by the following sad, sad lines, from the pen of John Rudolph Sutermeister, a young and gifted poet, whose mortal part has ‘been ashes these many a year,’ and whom the reader may remember as the author of a little poem widely quoted and admired many years ago, commencing:

To us, who are familiar with the painful circumstances under which they were written, and the deep affliction which they deplore, they seem almost to sob with irrepressible grief:

‘Who hath redness of eyes?’ This interrogative ‘portion of divine scripture’ is forcibly illustrated by an anecdote, related with most effective dryness by a friend of ours. An elderly gentleman, accustomed to ‘indulge,’ entered the bar-room of an inn in the pleasant city of H——, on the Hudson, where sat a grave Friend toasting his toes by the fire. Lifting a pair of green spectacles upon his forehead, rubbing his inflamed eyes, and calling for a hot brandy-toddy, he seated himself by the grate; and as he did so, he remarked to Uncle Broadbrim that ‘his eyes were getting weaker and weaker, and that even spectacles didn’t seem to do ‘em any good.’ ‘I’ll tell thee friend,’ rejoined the Quaker, ‘what I think. I think if thee was to wear thy spectacles over thy mouth for a few months, thy eyes would get sound again!’ The ‘complainant’ did not even return thanks for this medical counsel, but sipped his toddy in silence, and soon after left the room, ‘uttering never a word.’ ••• There have been various surmises, and sundry contradictory statements, in relation to the work superscribed ‘Count D’Orsay on Etiquette,’ which we noticed at some length in our December issue. Mr. Willis, of the ‘New Mirror’ weekly journal, seems to question its having been written by the Count, but expresses his belief that he may have loaned his name to the publishers ‘for a consideration;’ and this may possibly have been the fact with the latest London edition. The author of the work in question, however, is Mr. Charles William Day, an English gentleman, whose acquaintance with the usages of the best European society is personal and authentic; who has observed and travelled much; and who is moreover an artist of a high order; painting in miniature, and sketching with admirable skill. An esteemed friend and correspondent of this Magazine writes us from Boston, that the manner of the fraud is somewhat as follows: ‘Mr. Day is the author of a Journal of Travels, which Messrs. Longman and Company of London proposed to publish. As they treated him, however, in a dishonorable manner, he withdrew his MSS. from them and came to America. In retaliation, they sent orders to this country to have a spurious edition published of his work on ‘Etiquette,’ which they had formerly brought out, and which they truly supposed he designed to reprint in New-York or Boston. It has passed through more than twenty editions in London; a fact which I know, from having seen the Messrs. Longmans’ letters and accounts with the author. His own edition is now in press in Boston; and I learn that he has added some ‘Hints’ with an especial eye to Yankee manners.’ We have also received a letter from Mr. Day himself, in which, while he ‘forbears at present to make any comments on the conduct of the Messrs. Longman,’ he proves beyond a doubt that ‘the Count D’Orsay is not the writer of the ‘Hints on Etiquette,’ but that he himself is ‘the real, true author,’ past all peradventure. ••• A friend lately returned from the west, relates among other matters the following anecdote: ‘On board of one of the steam-boats on the Mississippi, I encountered a deck-hand, who went by the name of Barney. Like many of his class, he was a drinking, reckless fellow, but warm-hearted, good-natured, and generous to a fault. In early life he was in easy circumstances; was a husband, and the father of several children. But one night during a violent storm the house in which he resided was struck by lightning, and the whole family, save himself, were instantly killed. His own escape was considered a miracle at the time, not even a hair of his head having been singed. From that time, however, he took to drinking, and so sank lower and lower until he became what I found him. When I had heard his story, I felt somewhat interested in the man, and one day managed to draw him into conversation. He told me his early history with much natural pathos; and finding him in the ‘melting mood’ I endeavored to lead him to some serious thoughts upon the subject of his misfortunes, and especially of that one which had bereft him in so awful a manner of his wife and children. ‘Barney,’ said I, ‘don’t you think it was a signal mercy that you alone should have escaped unharmed from the bolt which destroyed all else you loved upon earth? Was there not at least something singular in the fact?’ ‘That’s what I said myself,’ replied Barney, in a tremulous voice; ‘I always thought it was very sing’lar. But the fact I suppose was this, Mr. Whitehat. The lightning, you see, was afraid of a man, and so like a d——d sneak, it went twisting about to scorch women and little children!’ ••• Blackwood has proclaimed in a late number, the ‘Characteristics of English Society,’ in language of truth and soberness, which goes explicitly to confirm the reports of nearly all American and other ‘foreigners’ who have visited England. We subjoin an extract contrasting English with French society:

‘We should indeed be sorry if our demeanor in those vast crowds, where English people flock together, rather, as it would seem, to assert a right, than to gratify an inclination, were to be taken as an index of our national character: the want of all ease and simplicity, those essential ingredients of agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary meetings have long been unfortunately notorious. Too busy to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own, that true politeness which pays respect to age; which tries to put the most insignificant person in company on a level with the most considerable—virtues which our neighbors possess in an eminent degree—are, except in a few favored instances, unknown among us; while affectation, in other countries the badge of ignorance and vulgarity, is ours, even in its worst shape, when it borrows the mien of rudeness, impertinence, and effrontery, the appendage of those whose station is most conspicuous, and whose dignity is best ascertained. There is more good breeding in the cottage of a French peasant than in all the boudoirs of Grosvenor square. ••• ‘Frivolity and insipidity are the prevailing characteristics of conversation; and nowhere in Europe, perhaps, does difference of fortune or of station produce more unsocial or illiberal separation. Very few of those whom fortune has released from the necessity of following some laborious profession are capable of passing their time agreeably without the assistance of company; not from the spirit of gaity which calls upon society for indulgence; not from any pleasure they take in conversation, where they are frequently languid and taciturn; but to rival each other in the luxury of the table, or by a great variety of indescribable airs, to make others feel the pain of mortification. They meet as if to fight the boundaries of their rank and fashion, and the less definite and perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank; it is an English disease.’

No doubt of it; and the question naturally arises, ‘Are not these the proper people to talk about men and manners and society in America?’ ••• ‘Never mind, my dear,’ says Baron Pompolino, while endeavoring to fit the fairy slipper of the lovely Cinderella upon the long splay foot of one of his ungainly daughters, ‘never mind, my dear, she is not at all like you!’ The doting father, it will be remembered, gives this verdict as a flattering compliment. We have sometimes been amused, where the quo animo was apparent, with similar compliments at the hands of reciprocal critics of literature. Pleasant examples in this kind have been furnished lately. A very voluminous critic, very far ‘down east,’ spoke recently in a metropolitan journal of Goldsmith’s ‘Deserted Village’ as ‘a very common-place poem, at the best, and only saved from utter and most contemptuous forgetfulness by two or three pleasantries about ‘broken tea-cups,’ etc., and by one single passage that smacks of sublimity!’ Of the poetry however of the author of ‘Man in his Various Aspects under the American Republic,’ he expresses in the same columns quite a different opinion. ‘There has been,’ he writes, ‘no English poetry better than his, within the memory of man!’ A writer in the last number of the ‘Southern Literary Messenger,’ likewise voluminous in prose and verse, if we rightly surmise, exhibits contrasts of judgment somewhat kindred with the foregoing, although certainly less violent. The author of ‘Man in his various Aspects,’ he tells us, ‘has a boldness that attracts;’ his are the ‘strong and struggling conceptions which seek utterance in new and original forms.’ He dares ‘to shun the beaten paths,’ and is not afraid to be obscure. His is not the poetry ‘which takes the popular ear without tasking the popular thought,’ like ‘the simple common-places of Longfellow.’ Such ‘criticism’ as this we have cited must needs ‘make the judicious’ laugh merely, being too impotent to make them ‘grieve.’ It is not perhaps assuming too much to suppose, that Goldsmith’s ‘Deserted Village’ and Longfellow’s ‘Psalms of Life,’ simple though they be, will live and be cherished in generations of human hearts, when the volumes of our critics and their client that yet survive the recollection of any save their publishers, shall be ‘forgotten and clean out of mind.’ •••It is related of the celebrated clergyman, John Mason, that sitting at a steam-boat table on one occasion, just as the passengers were ‘falling to’ in the customary manner, he suddenly rapped vehemently upon the board with the end of his knife, and exclaimed: ‘Captain! is this boat out of the jurisdiction of God Almighty? If not, let us at least thank Him for his continued goodness;’ and he proceeded to pronounce ‘grace’ amidst the most reverent stillness. It is to be hoped, however, that his ‘grace’ was not like the few set words handed down from father to son, mumbled without emotion, and despatched with indecent haste, which one sometimes hears repeated over country repasts. ‘Bless this portion of food now in readiness for us; give it to us in thy love; let us eat and drink in thy fear—for Christ’s sake——Lorenzo, take your fingers out of that plate!’ was a grace once said in our hearing, but evidently not in that of the spoilt boy, ‘growing and always hungry,’ who could not wait to be served. We should prefer to such insensible flippancy the practice of an old divine in New-England, who in asking a blessing upon his meals, was wont to name each separate dish. Sitting down one day to a dinner, which consisted partly of clams, bear-steak, etc., he was forced in a measure to forego his usual custom of furnishing a ‘bill of particulars.’ ‘Bless to our use,’ said he, ‘these treasures hid in the sand; bless this——’ But the bear’s-meat puzzled him, and he concluded with: ‘Oh! Lord, thou only knowest what it is!’ ••• A favorite correspondent of this Magazine, who appears in the pages of the present number for the first time in several months, accompanies his excellent paper with a letter, from which we take these sentences: ‘Since you last heard from me, I have experienced a severe domestic affliction in the loss of my father, who died during the last summer. Day after day and night after night for two months I sat by his bed-side, hoping in vain for his recovery, until life’s star was extinguished in the darkness of the grave.’ Our cordial sympathies are with our correspondent; but sympathy for affliction such as his can carry with it little of consolation to the bereaved:

Perchance our friend may now think with Cowper, that ‘although he loved, yet not enough, the gentle hand that reared him.’ ‘The chief thing that I have to reproach myself with,’ writes one who laments a kindred dispensation of the Supreme, ‘is a sort of inattention to my father’s feelings, occasionally, arising merely from the disparity of years between us, which I am sensible must at times have interfered with his enjoyments. I would gladly recall now, if I could, many opportunities I suffered to pass, of being more in his company, and more in the way of his advice and instruction.’ But he adds: ‘When I reflect on these things, it appears to me one of the strongest natural arguments for the immortality of the soul, and the renewal of our earthly relations in a world to come, that even where the greatest possible attachment subsists between parents and their children, the mere disparity of years inevitably prevents that complete association of feelings, and intimate fellowship of heart and soul, which is the cement and prerogative of all other friendships: in a world to come, but no where else, such attachments must receive their full completion.’ ••• Professor Gouraud, well known among us for his devotion to the interests of art and science, has perfected a System of Remembrance, which he designates by the term ‘Mnemotechny,’ and which we venture to predict will prove of the greatest service to nearly every class of society. No system of modern mnemonics bears any resemblance to, or comparison with it. Such is the astonishing effect of the plan, that young masters and misses, after a brief study of it, can with ease answer any question from score after score of close-printed pages, involving every variety of events, and all kinds of information. We ‘speak but the things which we do know,’ in this matter, for seeing is believing. As the scene of Prof. Gouraud’s operations is for the present the city, and as the daily journals have made his merits widely known to the community, we forbear farther comment at this time upon the useful art which he has brought to such wonderful perfection. New classes organize, we understand, at the Professor’s residence, No. 46, Second-street, on the fourth instant. They will be filled at once, and speedily followed by others. ••• There is an article in the last number of the Edinburgh Review upon ‘Theatres and the Drama,’ which is replete with wisdom, and evinces a thorough mastery of the theme. In alluding to the appeals which are now made to the eye by elaborate scenery, machinery, etc., less than to the mind and imagination by superior intellectual personation, the reviewer in effect remarks, that the first attempt at positive reality is fatal to pleasurable illusion. Every person in the pit is aware that the stage is a stage, ‘and all the men and women merely players.’ In ‘As you Like It,’ at Drury-Lane, an attempt was made to imitate the notes of birds. ‘Suppose the imitation had been so close as to deceive the audience into the belief that there were birds there singing; would not the contrast with trees of painted canvass have been revolting? These were not the conceptions of Shakspeare, when he made his chorus say:

Advice as necessary at the present day as then; for we may enlarge our stages, increase our supernumeraries, and engage ‘real horses;’ but we can never make any one believe the stage is other than the stage. The audience can realize for themselves. This trust in the all-sufficiency of imagination is precisely that acted on by children in their daily sports, where from the boundless wealth of the imagination, the rudest materials supply the place of the costliest. Whoever watches boys ‘playing horse,’ making a pocket-handkerchief dangling behind to represent the tail, and sees them stamping, snorting, prancing, and champing the imaginary bit, witnesses the alchymy of the imagination, an alchymy out-stripping all the wonders and out-weighing all the treasures of the prosaic positive chemistry, so longed for by the present generation. The child ‘supposes’ the handkerchief a tail, and it becomes a tail. He has but to say to his companion: ‘This shall be a whip and this shall be the harness,’ and the things are there; not as matters of literal fact, but of imaginative truth. He plays for the enjoyment of the game and the exercise of his imagination; and therefore the handkerchief serves every purpose. This is the procedure of nature. But the modern parent, anxious to realize for the child, and to instil a love of accuracy into his mind, gives him a superb horse-hair tail, bidding him at the same time be careful not to spoil it. What is the result? The child’s attention is called from the game, to the consideration of or delight in the tail, which, originally meant as a collateral aid, now takes the first place. The boy no doubt is delighted with his horse-hair tail; but (if it be not altogether superfluous,) it will soon destroy his game, so that the exercise, both of frame and imagination, is lost; the end becomes subordinate to the means. This is precisely what takes place with the drama. Observe also one important point: The tail is real; accuracy is attempted: but though the tail be real, the horse is not; the horse is played by a boy, and only by a boy; it is in this mimicry that the enjoyment consists. But how absurd to put a real tail on an unreal horse! How revolting this mixture of imagination and fact! It is equalled only by that ludicrous practice of placing the face of a real watch in the place of a church-clock in a landscape; where one may not only see the time of day, but may also hear it struck, and that amidst painted trees and houses! This effect, except to the most literal and prosaic minds, is revolting and discordant. But this the modern drama is strenuously endeavoring to produce. ‘In opera, ballet, and spectacle, scenery and illustrations must be effective, because they form elements of the piece. In the drama, where the source of entertainment is intellectual, they are merely accessories, and should be used in such wise as to keep up the harmony of effect, but never so as to distract attention from the drama to themselves.’ Here is a passage which is not less applicable in America than in England: ‘A few years ago it was not uncommon to see several performers of rival excellence supported by others of ability, all playing in the same piece. It is now a rare thing for rivals to play together. A single good actor, among a dozen bad, is deemed sufficient. Are we then to wonder that the regular drama does not pay?’ ••• Our readers will remember the order given by the Chinese Emperor to a corps of Mandarins, who were to exterminate the ‘barbarian Englishers’ in the harbor of Canton, by going down to the bank of the river in the night, and then and there ‘dive straight on board those foreign ships, and put every soul of them to death!’ Subsequently however the red-bristling foreigners managed to land, when, as it since turns out, it became necessary to adopt more sanguinary measures. The Emperor called up one of his ‘great generals,’ and gave him his dreadful orders: ‘You must dress your soldiers,’ said he, ‘in a very frightful manner, painting their faces with the most horrid figures, and depicting dragons and monsters on your banners: you must then rush upon the barbarians with fearful outcries, and terrify them so that they will fall down flat on their faces; and when they are once down,’ said the Imperial potentate, ‘their breeches are so tight that they can never get up again!’ ••• ‘I give you five minutes every day to look at the stars, but don’t particularize; for some in those far-off places send down their light long after they have been knocked out of existence, and you may be looking at a blank.’ So wrote ‘Julian’ in this department of our last number. Prof. Olmstead, of Yale-College, in a recent lecture before the ‘Mercantile Library Association,’ described the difficulty of ascertaining the distance of the stars from each other and from our earth; yet, he remarked, it had been done. The nearest star’s distance from us had been measured, and by the aid of light, by which it could alone be accomplished. That distance, he said, was immense, requiring ten years for light to traverse it! The planets, he had no doubt, were inhabited. Of what use was the reflection of the sun’s rays upon them, if there were no eyes there to behold it? What was the use of moons, which the planets certainly have? He spoke also of the fixed stars, which seem by the aid of a telescope to be innumerable. What was their purpose?—for a guide to mariners? No; for a very small portion of them could be seen by the unassisted eye. They were suns like our suns, to worlds like our worlds! To the inhabitants of those fixed stars our sun appears as a star, and the planetary system revolving around it, of which the earth is one, are unseen by them, as are those of theirs by us! Great God! ‘When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him!’ ••• Our correspondent who writes of ‘The Country,’ in preceding pages wields a facile pen. His allusion to the choice of names for a country-seat reminds us of the pleasant satire of ‘Thinks-I-to-myself’ upon this theme: ‘We lived, you must know,’ he writes, ‘in a Hall; not when I was born, however, nor till long afterward. My sister happened to have a correspondent at school near London, who finding it essentially necessary to the support of her dignity among her school-fellows, always directed her letters so; for the parents of one she found, lived at something House; and of another at What’s-its-name Place; and of another at Thingummy Lodge; of another at the Grange; of another at the Castle; of another at the Park; Miss Blaze, the daughter of a retired tallow-chandler, whose father lived at Candlewick-Castle, was continually throwing out hints that not to live at a ‘Castle,’ or a ‘Park,’ or a ‘Place,’ or a ‘House,’ or a ‘Lodge,’ unequivocally bespoke a low origin!’ Is this folly altogether indigenous to England? Let the high-sounding names of scores of painted pine palaces not a thousand miles from this metropolis make answer. ••• ‘It don’t weigh as much as I expected, and I always thought it wouldn’t!’ We were reminded of this remark of a person who desired a certain result, but was at the same time unwilling to relinquish his pride of opinion, by the note of our Mississippi correspondent, to whose long communication we alluded in our last number. We have ‘taken its measure,’ as we promised, and find it quite beyond our compass. ••• Our friend the Poetical Englishman is somewhat severe upon the godly inhabitants of ‘Botolph’s Town;’ yet we see nothing in his epistle that is not justified by recent occurrences in the ‘Literary Emporium.’ It is lamentable that Boston should be robbed of a decent theatre by an epidemic of pseudo-sanctity. Macready was compelled to play a recent engagement at a second-rate house, down in the ‘Wapping’ end of the town, whither all the beauty and fashion crowded nightly through the mud to see him. It strikes us that the ‘Purification Hymn,’ alluded to by our correspondent, must have been a choice production of some Mawworm of the day. Its reasoning is highly pellucid, and its dignity is past all question. ‘Mimic scenes, and mirth and joy,’ it would seem, ‘allure souls’ to endless perdition! Now against the licentiousness and drunkenness of the theatre too much cannot be said; but for ‘mimic scenes’ dragging men to ——. But cui bono? ‘Your dull ass will never mend his pace with beating.’ By the by, we are well pleased to see our English friend’s preference for mind over matter, in the way of dramatic personations. Yet England has little reason to boast. What says ‘the Viscount’ to the Chevalier (d’industrie) Pip? ‘What’s the good of Shakspeare, Pip? I never read him. What the devil is it all about? There’s a lot of feet in Shakspeare’s verse, but there ain’t any legs worth mentioning in Shakspeare’s plays, are there, Pip? Juliet, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of ’em, whatever their names are, might as well have no legs at all, for any thing the audience know about it. I’ll tell you what it is; what the people call dramatic poetry is a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre to be lectured? No; if I wanted that, I’d go to church. What’s the legitimate drama, Pip? Human nature. What are legs? Human nature. Then let us have plenty of leg-pieces, Pip, and I’ll stand by you, my buck!’ This is ‘the ticket’ in London, as well as in ‘Botolph his town.’ The ‘legs have it’ there as well as here. Meanwhile the sometime gallant Thespian is in a sad plight, from having little to do and little pay for it. Admirers fall off, one after another, under such circumstances; and even the gentle sex forget their old enthusiasm:

And thus he goes on, following his ‘occupation’ in one sense, and gradually sinking lower and lower; until at length:

Is not the following illustration of ‘The Affections,’ by Rev. Geo. B. Cheever, ‘beautiful exceedingly?’ ‘On a bright day in summer, while the west wind breathes gently, you stand before a forest of maples, or you are attracted by a beautiful tree in the open field, that seems a dense clump of foliage. You cannot but notice how easily the wind moves it, how quietly, how gracefully, how lovingly, the whole body of it. It is simply because it is covered with foliage. The same wind rustling through its dry branches in winter, would scarce bend a bough, or only to break it. But now, softly whispering through ten thousand leaves, how gently the whole tree yields to the impression! So it is with the affections, the feelings. They are the foliage of our being, moved by the spirit of God.’ ••• The annual Festival of Saint Nicholas, beloved of all good Knickerbockers, was celebrated on the sixth ultimo at the City Hotel, by a crowded assemblage of the members of the Society, and their invited guests. The new President was invested with the orange-badge and venerable cocked-hat of his ‘illustrious predecessor,’ and new subordinate officers were installed into their several stations; after which ceremony a sumptuous repast, served in the well-known style of Messrs. Jennings and Willard, was discussed with universal goût. For the toasts regular and volunteer, and speeches voluntary and involuntary, we must refer the reader to the daily journals ‘of that period;’ while we simply add, that from soup to Paäs eggs, schnaaps, and pipes, every thing passed off with unwonted hilarity and spirit. May we live to see fifty kindred gatherings of the votaries of our patron saint! ••• ‘You don’t like smokin’, ’taint likely?’ asked a lank free-and-easy Yankee, as he entered a room where four or five young ladies were sewing, puffing a dank ‘long-nine.’ ‘Well, we do not,’ was the immediate reply. ‘Umph!’ replied the smoker, removing his cigar long enough to spit, ‘a good many people don’t!’—and he kept on smoking. We know of one reader of the Knickerbocker, a thousand miles from the hand that jots down this anecdote, who will enjoy it hugely; and indeed it is mainly for him that we record it. ••• This is Thanksgiving Evening in the Empire State; and as there is a fair-haired, hazle-eyed little boy pulling at our ‘sword-arm,’ (too fatigued with writing to offer any resistance) suppose we read to you, while he sits ‘throned on his father’s knee,’ this timely and admirable passage from the pen of Charles Hoover, Esq., of New-Jersey, a fine scholar, and a writer of as pure Saxon English as the best among us:

‘There is much in the aspect of Divine Providence at the present time, both toward our own country and the world, to awaken gratitude and thoughtful joy. An unexampled spectacle is presented in the current history of the world. It is moving on almost without a ripple. The changes of time are taking place as noiselessly as the ordinary changes of nature. The decay of old and injurious social and political systems is going on like the crumbling of ruins in a desert, by the force of inherent tendency rather than by external violence; and milder and more benignant systems are appearing, not like those islands sprung by volcanic shocks above the bosom of the deep, but like the beauty of spring, or the glory of summer, by a natural and imperceptible growth. Within the memory of many yet living there was a very different state of things. Scarcely a month then passed without a shock, a press and medley in human affairs that amazed and bewildered men, and kept anxiety on the stretch. Such was the history of Europe. Every change was a concussion; every fear a storm; every revolution a convulsion. Not less in motion is society now, but it is like the motion of the spheres, grand and silent; and that silence is the emblem and the evidence of greatness and power in the present movement of Providence in human affairs. The once apparently random and divergent lines of that Providence now seem to be flowing to a common point, and terminating in one great result—the improvement and happiness of our race. Abating much of what has been extravagantly vaunted about the march of mind and the perfectibility of human society, it is still visibly true that the general condition of the world is improved and improving. Vast accessions have been made to science; knowledge has been diffused over a wider surface, than was ever before known; ignorance is felt to be a calamity if not a crime; truths that were formerly contemplated only in the closet of the sage, have become familiarized in the cottage and the common mind; the rights of men are better defined and understood; the power of rulers is swayed within juster limits, and is every where abandoning its old apparatus of racks and halters and dungeons as the means of governing immortal mind, and is silently conceding to it its alienable prerogative of free thought.’

We have little to chronicle of The Drama proper this month. Music, vocal and instrumental, has kept this branch of the fine arts somewhat in the back-ground. We have had the pleasure to see Mr. Macready once only at the Park, on which occasion he personated the character of Melantius in ‘The Bridal’ with transcendent power. We have seen this fine actor in no part, if we except perhaps that of Werner, in which his genius shone so conspicuous. He was admirably supported by the scarcely subordinate characters represented by Wheatly, Rider, Miss Cushman, and Mrs. H. Hunt. Mr. Wheatly has evidently much of ‘the heavy business’ at the Park upon his broad shoulders, for he appears in two or three pieces almost every night. On the occasion alluded to, no sooner had the curtain risen after ‘The Bridal,’ than we found him making Stentorian love (‘in a horn’) to the ‘Dumb Belle’ of the evening, in which he excited shouts of uproarious laughter. At the Bowery Theatre, as well as at the Chatham, ‘The Mysteries of Paris’ has run a most successful career. The Olympic has been crowded nightly by the mingled attractions of opera and travestie; while the Bowery Amphitheatre and Rockwell’s Circus at Niblo’s, have shared abundantly in the favor bestowed now-a-days upon popular entertainments. ••• ‘Dress always and act to please your partner for life, as you were fain to do before the nuptial-knot was tied.’ This is an old maxim, and here is ‘a commentator upon it.’ A newly-married lady is suddenly surprised by a visit from a newly-married man, when she straightway begins to apologize: ‘She is horribly chagrined, and out of countenance, to be caught in such a dishabille; she did not mind how her clothes were huddled on, not expecting any company, there being nobody at home but her husband!’ The husband meanwhile shakes the visitor’s hand, and says: ‘I am heartily glad to see you, Jack: I don’t know how it was, I was almost asleep; for as there was nobody at home but my wife, I did not know what to do with myself!’ ••• The beautiful lines by Mrs. M. T. W. Chandler, elsewhere in the present number, illustrate, or are illustrated by the following passage from Warren Hasting’s eloquent reflections upon the changes to which the SOUL is destined hereafter: ‘When the hour is at hand which is to dissolve the mortal tie, the soul parts without regret with those delights which it received from its sensual gratifications, and dwells only, dwells with a fond affection, on the partner or pledges of its love; or on friends from whom it seems to be cut off for ever; and if it looks, as it must look, to futurity, these are the first objects of its wishes connected with it, and the first ingredients in its conceptions of celestial felicity. For my own part (and on a subject like this, where can we so properly appeal as to ourselves?) although my reason dictates to me the hope of a future happiness, whatever may be the mode of it, yet my heart feels no interest in the prospect when viewed as a scene of solitary, selfish enjoyment. It recoils with horror at the thought of losing the remembrance of every past connexion, and even of those whom it loved most dearly, and of being forgotten by them utterly and for ever. Is this too, it asks, one of the delusions of life? No; for all its other passions expire before it; but this remains, like hope, ‘nor leaves us when we die.’’ ••• The ‘Anglo-American’ literary journal has just issued to its subscribers one of the finest counterfeit presentments of Washington that we have ever seen. It is a print almost the size of a full-length cabinet portrait in oil, engraved in a masterly manner by Halpin after Gilbert Stuart’s celebrated picture. If this superior engraving is a sample of what the patrons of the ‘Anglo-American’ are hereafter to expect from its publishers, it is easy to foresee that that spirited journal has entered upon a long career of popularity. ••• ‘T.’s ‘Stanzas’ await his order at the publication-office. They are far from lacking merit, but are in parts artificial and labored. Lines eked out with accented letters, in which

always seem to us to come rather from the head than the heart. We shall expect, nevertheless, to hear from our friend again, according to promise. ••• We ‘stop the press’ to announce that Mr. Punch has just dropped in from England, bringing the latest intelligence from ‘the other side.’ He has lately visited several places on the continent, not so much to see them as to be enabled to say, like other English travellers, that he had been there. ‘Mr. Punch, having arrived at Rouen late at night, left it very early the next morning, much impressed with the institutions of the city, both civil and architectural, as well as its manners, customs, and social life, which he is about to embody in a work called ‘Six hours and a half at Rouen,’ to be brought out by a fashionable publisher.’ From the reports of one of the learned societies, we derive the following important scientific information: ‘Mr. Sappy read a paper, proving the impossibility of being able to see into the middle of next week, from known facts with regard to the equation of time. He stated that, supposing it possible for a person to ascend in a balloon sufficiently high for his vision to embrace a distance of seven hundred miles from east to west, he would then only see forty minutes ahead of him; that is, he would see places where the day was forty minutes in advance of the day in which he lived. Thus he might be said to see forty minutes into futurity. It has also been proved that, in sailing round the world in one direction, a day’s reckoning is gained; so that the sailor on his return finds himself to be ‘a man in advance of his age’ by one day. This one day, however, is the farthest attainable limit; and it is therefore impossible to see into the middle of next Week!’ ‘Mr. Tite, proprietor of the ‘Metropolitan Bakedtatery’ brought forward his new ‘Low Pressure Potatoe-Can,’ upon an improved principle. It was constructed of tin, and warranted to sustain a pressure of twenty potatoes upon the square bottom. Mr. Tite explained that the steam had nothing to do with the warmth of the fruit, but was quite independent of it.’ ‘Mr. Flit brought forward his new and improved Street Telescope for looking at the moon. It was most ingeniously constructed, being to the eye a fine instrument of six feet long. Mr. Flit explained, however, that the telescope itself was only an eighteen-inch one, the case being manufactured to increase its importance, in which the real glass was enclosed. The chief merit of this invention was, that the moon could be seen equally well on cloudy nights, or when there was none at all, the case enclosing an ingenious transparency of that body, behind which a small lamp was hung. Mr. Flit could always command a view of any of the celestial bodies by the same means.’ Here are a few items of law from ‘The Comic Blackstone:’ ‘The statute of Edward the Fourth, prohibiting any but lords from wearing pikes on their shoes of more than two inches long, was considered to savor of oppression; but those who were in the habit of receiving from a lord more kicks than coppers, would consider that the law savored of benevolence.’ ‘Unlawfully detaining a man in any way is imprisonment; so that if you take your neighbor by the button, and cause him to listen to a long story, you are guilty of imprisonment.’ Punch’s idea of ‘Woman’s Mission’ differs somewhat from other reformers of the times: ‘To replace the shirt-button of the father, the brother, the husband, which has come off in putting on the vestment; to bid the variegated texture of the morning slipper or the waistcoat grow upon the Berlin wool; to repair the breach that incautious haste in dressing has created in the coat or the trowsers, which there is no time to send out to be mended; are the special offices of woman; offices for which her digital mechanism has singularly fitted her.’ Apropos of ‘Missions:’ we perceive that Dickens understands this vague verbal apology for eccentricity or humbugeousness, if we interpret aright his frail and tearful Moddle; ‘who talked much about people’s ‘missions,’ upon which he seemed to have some private information not generally attainable,’ and who, ‘being aware that a shepherd’s mission was to pipe to his flock, and that a boatswain’s mission was to pipe all hands, and that one man’s mission was to be a paid piper, and another man’s mission was to pay the piper, had got it into his head that his own peculiar mission was to pipe his eye, which he did perpetually.’ ••• A curious volume has recently appeared in Paris, entitled ‘Poésies Populaires Latines antérieures au Douzième Siècle;’ and as sequels to the work, are certain satires upon the avarice and corruption of the papal government in the twelfth century, among which is the following curious parody:

‘Here beginneth the Gospel according to Marks of silver.—In that time the pope said to the Romans: When the son of man cometh to the seat of our majesty, say ye first, Friend, what seekest thou? But if he continue knocking, and give you nothing, cast him out into utter darkness. And it came to pass that a certain poor clerk came to the court of our lord the pope, and cried out, saying, Have pity on me at least you, O gate-keepers of the pope, for the hand of poverty hath touched me. Verily I am needy and poor; therefore, I pray ye, relieve my calamity and my wretchedness. But they, when they heard him, were very wroth, and said, Friend, thy poverty be with thee to perdition! get behind me, Sathanas, for thou art not wise in the wisdom of money. Verily, verily I say unto thee, thou shalt not enter into the joy of thy lord until thou hast given thy last farthing. And the poor man departed, and sold his cloak and his coat and all that he had, and gave it to the cardinals and to the gate-keepers; and they said, What is this among so many? And they cast him out before the doors; and he went out, and wept bitterly, and might not be comforted. Then there came to the court a certain rich clerk, great and fat and swollen, who in a riot had slain a man. He gave first to the gate-keeper, secondly to the chamberlain, thirdly to the cardinals; but they thought among themselves that they should have received more. And when our lord the pope heard that the cardinals and ministers had received many gifts of the clerk, he became sick unto death. But the rich man sent him a medicine of gold and silver, and immediately he was cured. Then our lord the pope called to him the cardinals and ministers, and said to them, Brethren, see that no one seduce you with empty words; for I give you an example, that as I myself receive, so receive ye.’

The corruptions of this era are equally well illustrated by a very amusing anecdote of ‘a handsome Italian friar, teres atque rotundus, about thirty, and extremely bold and eloquent;’ doubtless one of that class so felicitously limned by Thomson:

One day at a remote confessional of the church he declared an unholy and forbidden passion to a young and beautiful married lady, whom he had long ‘followed with his eyes,’ and begged permission to visit her at her residence. Struck with surprise at this new revelation of his character, she evaded reply, being secretly minded to inform her husband, when she returned home, which she did, word for word. He told his wife to contrive to let the friar come, alone and in secret, the next evening, which chanced to be that of Saturday, and the night before the Sunday of Saint Lazarus, on which occasion the friar was to preach. The appointment was made; the friar came, true to the late hour which had been designated; was received at the door, and shown into the lady’s bed-room by a servant, who informed him that she had desired him to request the good man to retire to rest, and to say that ‘she would be with him straight.’ The friar prepared to comply with the direction, and was about stepping into bed, when the door opened suddenly, and the lady entered in great apparent trepidation, exclaiming: ‘My husband is knocking at the door! For heaven’s sake slip into that chest,’ showing him a double one in the apartment, ‘and lie there until I see what may be done! Meanwhile I will hide your clothes somewhere or other, as well as I am able. Heaven knows I fear more for your holy person than I do for my own life!’ The unfortunate wretch, seeing himself reduced to such a pass, did as the worthy lady desired; while the husband, presently coming in, retired to rest with his wife, who had first locked the friar safe in the chest. The poor prisoner uttered sundry involuntary noises in the course of the night, and was in the direst terror at the inquiries which they awakened on the part of the husband. Daylight at length came, and the church-bells began to ring for prayers, which greatly annoyed the captive, who was to preach at the cathedral. The husband having risen, ordered two servants to carry the chest to the church and place it in the middle, saying they were ordered to do so by the preacher; and that unlocking the chest without raising the lid, they should leave it there; all which the fellows did very neatly. Every body stared, and wondered what all this could mean; some said one thing and some another. At last the bell having ceased to ring, and no one appearing in the pulpit, or any other part of the church, a young man rose and said: ‘Really, the good friar makes us wait quite too long; pray let us see what he has ordered to be brought in this chest.’ Having said this much, he before all the congregation lifted up the lid, and looking in, beheld the friar in his shirt, pale, almost frightened to death, and certainly appearing more dead than alive, and as if buried in the chest. Finding himself discovered, however, he collected his mind as well as he could, and stood upright, to the great astonishment of all present; and having taken his text from the Sunday of Lazarus, he thus addressed his congregation: ‘My dear brethren: I am not at all astonished at your surprise in seeing me brought before you in this chest, or rather at my ordering myself to be brought thus: ye know that this is the way in which our holy church commemorates the wonderful miracle our Lord performed on the person of Lazarus, in raising him from the dead who had been buried four days. I was desirous in your favor to present myself to you as it were in the form of Lazarus, in order that seeing me in this chest, which is no other than an emblem of the sepulchre wherein he had been buried, you might be moved more effectually to the consideration of what perishable things we are; and that seeing me stripped of all worldly decorations, thus in my shirt, you may be convinced of the vanity of the things of this world, the which, if only duly considered, may tend greatly to the amending of our lives. Will you believe that since yesterday night I have been a thousand times dead, and revived as Lazarus was; and considering my dreadful situation, remember (as it were with the memory of a similar penance in your hearts) that we must all die, and trust to Him who can bestow upon us life eternal: but first ye must die to sin, to avarice, to rapine, to lust, and all those sinful deeds to which our nature prompts us.’ In such language, and in such manner, did the friar continue his sermon. The husband, astonished at the extraordinary presence of mind which he displayed, laughed heartily at his success; and in consideration of the adroitness of the culprit, did not attempt any farther revenge; ‘but,’ it is added, ‘he took very good care to shut his door in future against all such double-faced hypocrites.’ ••• Reader, what are you thinking of at this moment? ‘Nothing.’ Indeed! and so were we, and of how much a clever man once said upon the subject; observe: ‘Philosophers have declared they knew nothing, and it is common for us to talk about doing nothing; for from ten to twenty we go to school to be taught what from twenty to thirty we are very apt to forget; from thirty to forty we begin to settle; from forty to fifty, we think away as fast as we can; from fifty to sixty, we are very careful in our accounts; and from sixty to seventy, we cast up what all our thinking comes to; and then, what between our losses and our gains, our enjoyments and our inquietudes, even with the addition of old age, we can but strike a balance of ciphers.’ Happy are they who amidst the variations of nothing have nothing to fear; if they have nothing to lose, they have nothing to lament; and if they have done nothing to be ashamed of, they have every thing to hope for. ••• Sententiousness, let us inform ‘S.’ of Cambridge, and antitheses, do not consist of short sentences and inversion of words merely; and even the most felicitous examples in each case often sacrifice the sound to the sense. Here is an instance which is unobjectionable: ‘I knew the old miser well. He amassed a fortune by raising hemp; and if he had had his deserts, would have died as he lived by it.’ ••• Just as the sheets of this department were passing to the press, we received the announcement of a public exhibition of two collections of pictures, which we have seen, and to which we cannot resist the impulse of directing the public attention. At the rooms of the National Academy, corner of Broadway and Leonard-street, may be seen Mr. Cole’s allegorical pictures of ‘The Voyage of Life,’ heretofore noticed at length in these pages; ‘Mount Ætna, from Taormina, Sicily,’ one of the most noble paintings that ever came from this eminent artist’s pencil; ‘Angels ministering to Christ in the Wilderness;’ ‘The Past and the Present;’ ‘A View of Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma,’ and other pictures; altogether, an exceedingly fine collection. Indeed, the superb view of Ætna alone, with its vast and sublime accessories, is of itself an exhibition worth twice the price of admission. At the rooms of the Apollo Association, nearly opposite the Hospital, in Broadway, Mr. Harvey’s series of Forty Historic or Atmospheric American Landscape Scenes are to be seen for a short time. It needed not the high patronage of Queen Victoria, the praises of English royalty and nobility, nor the warm encomiums of Allston, Sully, Moore, and others, to secure attention to these graphic sketches from nature. They are their own best recommendation. Trust our verdict, reader, and go and see if they are not. ••• ‘Terpsichore’ is the title of a very spirited satirical poem read at the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge University in August last, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and copied in ‘Graham’s Magazine’ for January. We subjoin a passage which although abundantly poetical contains yet more truth than poetry. It ‘bases’ upon the Dickens dinner: